Many thanks to Chris Cotton, an English teacher at my alma mater Shaker Heights High School (Go Raiders!) for inspiration on this quiz. He sent over a list of words with unexpected foreign origins. Can you match these ten English words with the foreign language they came from? Some may have deeper roots, but there’s only one good match for each word.
Take the Quiz: Language of Origin
Comments (7)
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Shaker Heights?! My dad graduated from there…. as did Paul Newman.
posted by Hyacinth on 2-18-2010 at 12:06 pm
My first 10 out of 10 – woo-hoo!
posted by mathesond on 2-18-2010 at 12:27 pm
? So waffle died out in English and then was re-introduced from Dutch?
posted by Gwan on 2-18-2010 at 6:37 pm
Shaker Heights?! *I* graduated from there…as did my dad.
posted by SNJ on 2-18-2010 at 7:45 pm
10 for 10 also, mainly by process of elimination. Answer the ones I knew for sure, and then reason out the rest, although even then I had to guess at the last two.
-”BB”-
posted by Bicycle Bill on 2-19-2010 at 4:18 am
7/10. I may be good at world languages but not word origins.
posted by Karl on 2-19-2010 at 8:38 am
On the origin for checkmate should that not read ” the KING is unable to escape”?
posted by Brad on 7-22-2010 at 1:07 pm